MZ Riders Club

South of Scotland Section

Page updated : 17/12/2005

Site designed by Mike

Skorpion in Finland

by Mike Barnes

I had decided that riding my own bike to Finland to visit my friend Keijo, another MZ rider, was feasible and something I could manage. I have another friend in the northern German town of Bad Bramstedt , Klaus, and my plan was to ship the bike to the nearest port, Hamburg, 40km south of his house. Klaus would help me collect the bike and we would then ride to the Finnish MZ Club annual rally on June 18^th together.

I have a 2000 model MZ Skorpion with 48,000km on it purchased new from Readford’s in Dubbo. Klaus has an MZ ETZ250 model. Using a Garmin Sat-Nav we would ride the 1700km, finding back roads where possible. Our route would take us from Puttgarden on the tip of Northern Germany, through Denmark to Sweden, then north up through Central Sweden to Grisslehamn, then east across the Baltic Sea by four ferries through the Aland Islands and on to Turku on the Finnish west coast. We would the ride the 270km north-east to the rally site outside of Ikaalinen in central Finland. The ride as it turned out was fantastic and went pretty much as planned.  

I found out about Get Routed www.getrouted.com.au a motorcycle shipping service run by Dave Milligan. Inquiring, I found that the dates for Dave’s UK shipment were fairly close to the timing of my trip. The sea voyage takes 43 days leaving Melbourne in March 2006. At that time Dave was shipping bikes from Melbourne to the port of Felixstowe on the English Channel, in Suffolk, about 100km north of London. He now ships out of other capital cities. Most of the bikes are ridden by their owners to race meetings on the Isle of Man, the North-West 200 in Northern Ireland or the Dutch TT at Assen. Dave chooses shipment dates to coincide with these events. He charges $2,800 sea freight for most machines short of Gold Wing-size from Melbourne to Felixstowe and return to Australia. Included in this price is the cost of secure storage while the bikes are awaiting shipment from Melbourne and likewise in Felixstowe, container hire, Australian & UK Customs paperwork and clearances, marine insurance, loading and unloading. I was assured that there would be assistance available at the shipping depot to pick up the bike during office hours. Dave arranges optional comprehensive insurance coverage for both the UK & EU through Carole Nash for 80 pounds. In transit the bikes are packed securely in their own container on individual cradles.  

This was all good. Looking further I found that a ferry runs from Harwich, just south of the Get Routed agent’s depot in Felixstowe to the port of Esbjerg in Denmark. Esbjerg is 250km north across the border from my friend Klaus’s house in Bad Bramstedt in Northern Germany. As the crow flies the depot was only 6kms from the ferry terminal. However, they are at the northern and southern tips of a large bay. The round trip by road was 60 miles of motorway and suburbs. I would also get to see the UK which I hadn’t planned on.

Other general customs agents that claim to offer a comprehensive service to any major seaport or airport;

World Wide Customs and Forwarding Agents www.wwcf.com.au

World Wide Shipping Agencies www.worldwideshippingagencies.com

The Horizons Unlimited website has first-hand accounts of shipping bikes.

Getting to Felixstowe from Heathrow Airport by public transport involves three train connections to Paddington Station, Ipswich and Felixstowe, taking about three hours. I needed to stay overnight in Felixstowe and I chose the Grafton Guesthouse recommended by Dave Milligan. I’m glad I did because the proprietors Geoff and his wife couldn’t have been more obliging. The next day Geoff stored some of my luggage for safe keeping and drove me the two miles to the shipping depot to collect the bike. It’s a powerful thing to find someone who is prepared to help you (a motorcyclist) on your way when you’re thousands of kilometres from home and don’t know a soul. Felixstowe itself is a popular seaside holiday town noted for its Victorian-era buildings. Summer booking for the Grafton and anywhere else in town should be made well in advance.

The bike was waiting for me in a warehouse corner looking just as I had left it in Melbourne. I signed a few forms in the office and the bike was mine. 14 bikes were shipped in one container to Felixstowe and Dave insists on clean machines to avoid any problems with Customs such as mud under wheel guards. I had stored my riding gear in the panniers, my helmet in a bag locked to the bike. Panniers were wrapped in bubble wrap. Dave’s UK agents say there have never been any problems with his shipments. My bike had had a thorough shop service at Readfords in Dubbo before riding to Melbourne plus a new battery and a Pirelli Diablo rear tyre. After a few loud backfires the 660 single engine started and I set off back to the guesthouse to load my gear. Later that afternoon I rode to the 60 miles to the Harwich ferry terminal. Riding your own bike in a foreign country is a big buzz and the feeling never left me in four weeks of daily riding. I would be needing that heightened awareness when the time came to ride off the Denmark ferry onto the right hand side of the road.

While waiting to board the Harwich ferry a group of 100 or so Danish Hells Angels rode off, throwing out a really loud sustained roar like a squadron of taxiing Flying Fortresses. I’d heard that sound often enough before, living just 500 metres from the Mitchell Highway as I do. What struck me was how clean they looked. Geez, even the Hells Angels look smart in Scandinavia. While waiting I spoke for some time with a fit looking 68 year old ex-policeman from Norfolk riding to Germany on a Deauville to visit his son. He had trenchant views on the current state of his country. I learnt that the GB stickers on vehicles stands for George Bush.

Out on the North Sea as the ferry headed north-east a strong cold wind blew on deck and I wondered what I had got myself in for riding a motorcycle to Central Finland, 800km from the Arctic Circle. The ferry unloaded passengers, cars and dozen motorcycles at Esbjerg at 1.30pm Sunday. As a non-EU citizen I had my passport stamped and my International Driving License scrutinised. I had downloaded maps from Multimaps.com and Google Earth. My destination that day was Bad Bramstedt, 300km to the south.

The weather was warm and sunny, the traffic light, so I could concentrate on staying on the right side of the road. It’s especially easy to forget when pulling out from service stations and negotiating the numerous roundabouts. Indicating when exiting roundabouts is important.

On German autobahns and French/Belgian autoroutes indicating your intention in a deliberate manner is vital as are functional mirrors. It is shocking how fast cars come up behind you on the outside left lane and catch you unawares. You are behind a truck wanting to move out to overtake, one second your mirror is clear, a moment later a vehicle is right beside you waiting for you to change lanes.

I allowed a maximum cruising speed of 130kph and stayed mostly in the middle lane. The fastest cars and bikes, roughly one third of the vehicles on the road, including Smart Cars, cars pulling trailers and cars with upright bikes on the roof were passing me in the left lane like I was standing still. For all that the general impression I got of the standard of driving was pretty good, I sensed that drivers around me could see me.

On hilly roads in Scandinavia, Germany and France truck drivers would move to the inside and wave me past if they were able to. The feeling of confidence, such as it was, diminished somewhat in the thicker UK traffic where the same numbers of cars as in France share a much smaller land area. On maps autobahns/auto routes/motorways are red or yellow, main roads are yellow, secondary roads are white, minor roads are uncoloured.  Australian freeways may be duller to ride on than our rural secondary roads but in Europe motorways are essential because European main, and a great many secondary, roads go through built-up areas, complete with traffic lights, pedestrian crossings and a village every 5-10kms. 

I got myself lost in built-up areas a number of times when I missed the turn-offs I needed. Was that turnoff to the D938 after Kittylitter and before Ratsak or the other way around?  Eventually I got to Klaus’s house at 7.30pm.

We set off the next afternoon with two additional riders, Klaus on his ex-German army 1980’s MZ ETZ250 bought at auction, Detlef on a similar MZ and Thom on a 2005 BMW 1200 Roadster. Detlef’s handlebar mounted Garmin Sat-Nav calculated the distance at 1695km. Using the Garmin to find smaller roads we rode north-east through green countryside, averaging about 80kph. We took a 45 minute ferry trip to Puttgarden. It was a hot sunny Sunday and the German countryside was full of bikes. From Puttgarden we took a second 20 minute ferry ride to Rodbynhavn in Denmark. The cost was 50 Euros for both trips, including the bike. Denmark was green and flat with light traffic on excellent roads and no rubbish on the roadsides. We rode 300km stopping at Helsingborg in Sweden at midnight when it was truly dark. Helsingborg is a beautiful city, its harbour waters reflecting the light of a full moon. The campground the Garmin directed us to was closed so we rode the 10km back into Helsingborg. Dead tired by this time we stayed at the Stadsmotellet close by the ferry terminal, a nice place but pricey.

The next day was spent riding mostly on highways because we were unable to find quiet roads running roughly in the direction we wanted to go, north through the centre of Sweden. Once again I was impressed with the standard of driving. The traffic was heavy, but well ordered. It didn’t feel threatening. There were plenty of other bikes around and almost all wave as you pass, though they are often desultory. German riders merely raise a few fingers from the bars. 

The German riders I was with displayed a casual attitude to other road users. They didn’t blatantly break road rules but they held up traffic at junctions while they conferred about the route and overtook other vehicles wherever they pleased. We rode north 300km in bright sunny weather via Jonkoping and Huskvarna stopping at 7.30pm in Hjo, a Swedish resort town on Lake Vattern, the fifth biggest lake in Europe - 135 km long and 31 km wide. Detlef’s Garmin led us to an attractive campground right on the lake. I took a hut for 450 Kroner. It was 29C, but the Lake Vattern Water Monster wasn’t keen on sunbathing that day. According to local lore in 1897 local swimmers fled in panic when it walked onto Varamoviken beach on two short thick legs.

Swedish sealed roads are in good condition. No rubbish on the side, no gravel on corners, no bullet holes in signs. Our overall progress was pretty modest, however, because of the slow 250’s and the number of junctions and roundabouts we had to negotiate. We rode 270km north-east the next day stopping at the campground at Mariefred on Lake Malaren at 3.00pm.

These are the average prices for campgrounds in Sweden;

Your own tent plus use of facilities - 55kr (au$10 per person).

A hut with four bunks plus of facilities - 400kr (au$72).

A hut with four bunks and ensuite - 450kr (au$82).

The proprietors allowed me use of the laundry to do some much needed clothes washing.

Day five since leaving the UK. I’d now ridden about 850km with Klaus, Detlef and Thom. They spoke English fairly well as do most of the folk I met in six countries with the exception of France. This day we rode 240km to a campground on the Baltic Sea near Grisslehamn and the ferry port to Finland. We avoided the capital Stockholm by riding on minor roads around it in a big loop through Koping, Tillberga, Skokloster and Vaddo. The countryside in a large part of Scandinavia is mostly flat having been ground down by the weight of a couple of kilometres of ice in ages past. The Baltic Sea is shallow for the same reason. It’s still very attractive with its neat towns, green fields, distinctive rust red coloured farm buildings and distinctive stick fences. The guys took me to the Skokloster Motor Museum set in parkland and part of Skokloster Castle, the biggest private castle in Sweden. The exhibits are displayed in an old building with 1637 carved over the entrance, but inside the style and fittings are all modern Scandinavian. There were only six motorcycles on display, among them a beautiful BMW 250 single racer and a large capacity Swedish Monarch. The entrance fee is 50 Swedish Kroner (AU$9). A feature of the Skokloster Motor Museum is the tableaux of mannequins in uniforms arranged inside and around every vehicle. A lot of work has gone into putting together the uniforms, accessories and period ephemera so that they complement each vehicle realistically. In particular the red 1961 Lancia sports sedan with an airline pilot and air hostess as driver and passenger, their baggage, hats, flight documents and magazines on the back seat and window shelf, all authentic and right for the period. Skokloster Castle is accessible by boat, a beautiful white wooden motor cruiser, from Stockholm Town Hall: www.skokloster.se/page.php?id=21

We rode on east another 100km and took a hut in a campground located in a clearing in a pine forest at Vaddo right on a sandy beach on the Baltic Sea. Stopping at a supermarket for food the range and quality of the stock was impressive, but pricey, of course. We were now only 50km from Grisslehamn and arrived there the next day by a small road that followed the coast winding around bays and headlands through forest. Traffic was minimal but there was a good crowd of people and assorted vehicles waiting at the port terminal to take the Aland Island ferry. The Aland Islands group is Finnish territory and lie 100km east off the Swedish coast. The 3-hour ferry trip over smooth sparkling waters with a big Scandinavian buffet laid on was great. We were hungry having camped for days and tucked into all sorts of delicacies at a table by a sunny window. The ferry fare was 990 Swedish Krona (AU$180) including lunch.

The Aland Islands are very green and attractive with lovely small roads. We took huts for one night at a campground near Vardo, again right on the Baltic Sea shore. Over a 2 day period we caught a total of four ferries, two big and two small to get us across all the islands. We landed in Turku, on Finland’s south-western coast having travelled 317km but actually rode only 110km . We were still on the same latitude as central Sweden, the weather continued to stay pretty well ideal for motorcycling. Riding north-east 270km on a highway we reached the city of Ikaalinen and our destination, the campground on one of the lakes surrounding the city, at 7.30pm Friday evening. I can’t say night because it doesn’t get properly dark until 11pm. There were 62 riders from Finland, Russia, Holland, Germany, one from the UK and one from Australia. The Australian collected a longest distance award and an armful of memorabilia at the awards ceremony on Saturday evening which included a book on the history of the MZ marque written in impenetrable Finnish. The Finns are unassuming and straightforward people and I was treated kindly. They are nice people to spend time with. On Saturday night the women and then the men took a sauna, followed by a dip in the lake. The water in the lake was room temperature. The sauna, after days of riding was just fantastic. It was good to spend time with my friend Keijo. He is the MZ Club of Finland’s secretary and one of the rally organisers. Finns on average drink a lot of strong alcohol. Drink driving accidents are all too common and the club guys were concerned about the drinking at the rally, not that I noticed that much, but Finns are quieter drinkers than Australians. Keijo thinks they will move the rally further north next year closer to the Arctic Circle and some distance from shops. Keijo was hit by a drunk driver head-on on the crest of a hill a few years ago. He suffered terrible injuries which he continues to deal with bravely. 

I parted company with Klaus, Detlef and Thom on Sunday morning. Klaus is a train driver for German Railways in Hamburg and he was only able to get a short time off work and had to return home the way we had come. I rode south alone for 300km on freeways and back roads, my destination Hanko on Finland’s southern tip to catch a ferry to Rostock in northern Germany. I was now only about 500km west of St. Petersburg in Russia and would have liked to have continued east. The traffic was light, the road and weather were fine but I wanted to see more of Germany and France before riding back to Felixstowe. This countryside had bigger mountains than in central Finland and it reminded me of northern NSW without the traffic and the cops. The big roadside diner I stopped at near Helsinki was really very good too, offering good quality food buffet style.

The bike with 50,000km on it was still running OK, the only problems being a slightly weeping fork seal and an annoying worn intermittent rear tail light connection. I stuck a small piece of wood behind the bulb housing.  

The Hanko-Rostock ferry cost 600 Euros (AU$1007) on a SuperFast ferry run by the Tallink line. At a cruising speed of 27 knots the 1400km journey past Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea took 24 hours. It wasn’t quite as fast as the now extinct 40 knot DevilCat service across Bass Strait. 

I arrived at Rostock at 8pm German time and proceeded to get very lost looking for a minor road out of the city. My destination for the night was the historic town of Bad Doberan 100km west. Somewhere in the Rostock CBD I stopped at a huge intimidating Police building pretty desperate to get clear directions. The Police were amazingly friendly and curious about my trip on a German bike with Australian plates. Before reunification in 1989 Rostock had been part of communist East Germany and a major industrial centre with a population of 253,000. The world’s first jet planes were tested there in World War II.  When Germany was reunited the population declined to less than 200,000. I was just 300km north of the MZ factory in Zschopau near the border with the Czech Republic but I chose to ride towards Belgium and France.

MZ are the oldest motorcycle manufacturer still operating in the world. The current name Motorrad Zweiradwerke literally translated means motorised two wheel factory. A rad is any kind of wheel in German. Zwei the number two. Werke; factory or works.  

I got to Bad Doberan about 10pm. It was still light, but it had been raining  and the narrow cobble- stoned streets were very slippery. A German Bad town is a spa or resort town.

One night in the City Hotel cost 66 Euros (AU$110.00). No one I met could, or would, converse in English which reinforced the ‘olde worlde’ atmosphere.

I collect old road maps and since I don’t own a Garmin I had brought a few Michelin and Esso maps of Europe from the early 1950’s, with me hoping to find roads not included on modern maps. The old maps sold at garages from the 1920’s to the 60’s before the main roads were built up into highways and freeways were generally more detailed than the equivalent maps sold today. A sat-nav unit would have saved a lot of tooling around with paper maps however. I left Bad Doberan following minor roads more or less in a south-westerly direction through green flat countryside with the smell of pig farms or biodynamic fertiliser, I couldn’t decide which, in the air and huge wind farms ever present on the horizon. A friendly bike shop in the city of Nienburg fixed my dodgy tail unit for free in ten minutes. West of the town of Belecke in south-western Germany I found a great mountain road that took me into Belgium and then an autobahn that took me past the turnoffs for Aachen, Liege and Mons. I stopped at Mons for the day, a Friday, having ridden 460km, booking into the Infotel Hotel near the centre of Mons not far from the huge cobble-stoned market square. The cafes and restaurants were full of people enjoying themselves and a line of motorcycles were parked in the front of the medieval town hall building.  

The next day I hit the autoroutes again and was soon in France. I turned off near Cambrai, heading south through Arras onto smaller roads before eventually stopping at the memorial to World War I Australian soldiers in the village of Pozieres. The memorial adjoins the road and the Australian flag flying on a big flagpole was very noticeable to passing traffic.

I rode east through attractive countryside to the coastal town of Berck, full of French holidaymakers, then north stopping for the night at the Hotel Le Vauban in the town of Montreuil. Cost was 47 Euros (AU$80) for a double room with breakfast in a two-storied 19^th century building overlooking the town square. It was Saturday night and the locals of all ages were out in the square eating from food stalls at picnic benches, raffling prizes of local produce and listening to live music. Leaving early the next day I was amazed by the marvellous old buildings of all shapes and sizes close together around the northern exit. More than a few had unmistakable bullet hole marks on them. Winding up and down and around the twisty cobble-stoned road for a kilometer there were no modern buildings to be seen.

I enjoyed a nice ride through early morning fog, again taking a zig-zag route to avoid large roads. After 90 minutes I linked up with the A16 autoroute to Calais and arrived at the crowded terminal in time for the noon ferry to Dover. I had to join the queue of non-EU vehicles and had my documents thoroughly checked out. I also had to answer some detailed questions about my itinerary in the UK. The 75 minute trip in the inverted 20 storey building that doubled as a sailing vessel cost 50 pounds (AU$124). It was my ninth ferry ride of the trip. I was now an informed ferry consumer.

A few hours later I was negotiating the London A25 ring road system and telling myself that going via London was the quickest way to Felixstowe. It was hard work, made harder because I was riding on the left again in heavy traffic, traffic with so many trucks in places they obscured the already inadequate road signs, especially the overhead ones at big junctions. Then there was the numerous road works and detours. The construction works on the roads leading onto the Dartford Tunnel under the Thames filled an entire wide valley. I eventually escaped London’s commercial pull and rode the 60 miles to Felixstowe on the A12 and A14.

I spent another night at the Grafton Guest House and the next day, a Monday, thoroughly cleaned the MZ and left it with the staff at Get Routed agent’s depot for the 43 day voyage home . In all I rode through seven countries, covered 3,600km in a month, amazingly without falling off.

Unleaded petrol prices per litre June 2006 in Australian $’s in the countries visited ;

UK $2.70

Germany $2.64

Denmark  $2.70

Sweden  $1.90

Finland $2.64

France/Belgium $2.00